The suspect in the Magdeburg Christmas market massacre had bragged to the BBC about a website he set up to help ex-Muslims seek asylum in the West.
50-year-old psychologist Taleb al-Abdulmohsen rammed into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg last night, killing at least two and injuring almost 70.
Al-Abdulmohsen, an anti-Islam doctor from Saudi Arabia, arrived in Germany in 2006 and had worked to help ex-Muslims, mainly women, flee their country after turning their backs on Islam.
He created a website called wearesaudis.net to provide information on “escape routes” for people leaving Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region.
His fate of helping asylum seekers settle in Europe was documented in a 2019 interview with the BBC World Service, during which it was revealed that he was forced to leave his home country due to his atheism.
“If I have time, you know, Saudi asylum seekers, I spend ten to sixteen hours a day, if I have time,” he told the broadcaster at the time.
He also explained that most of the people who approached him for help through his website were Muslim women trying to escape their strict families.
Meanwhile, analysis of his social media reveals tweets in support of Germany’s anti-immigration party AfD.
The suspect in the Magdeburg Christmas market massacre had bragged to the BBC about a website he set up to help ex-Muslims seek asylum in the West
Psychologist Taleb al-Abdulmohsen told the BBC that he was forced to leave Saudi Arabia because of his atheism
Footage taken in the minutes after the crash, which took place around 7 p.m., showed Taleb al-Abdulmohsen lying on the ground next to the wrecked BMW
He has also made comments in support of Elon Musk, far-right thug Tommy Robinson and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
His X biography reads: ‘Saudi military opposition. Germany is pursuing female Saudi asylum seekers, inside and outside Germany, to destroy their lives. Germany wants to Islamize Europe’.
The posts included retweets of explicit videos, including one of a young Muslim woman who was allegedly stoned “for having an affair with a young man outside of marriage.”
Another was a retweet of a message that simply read: “Can you find something positive about Islam?”
In videos posted hours before the attack, he claimed German authorities opened his mail and stole items including a USB stick.
“I consider the Germans as citizens responsible for the persecution I face,” he said in a video.
“Currently in this country the nation that is actively criminally pursuing Islam critics is the German nation,” he said in another country.
He also appears to be a fan of the AfD. In June, he retweeted party leader Alice Weidel, writing with typos: “The left is crazy. We need the AfD to protect the police from them.”
German police are seen pointing their guns at Abdulmohsen shortly before his arrest yesterday after he drove a car into a crowd of people at Magdeburg’s Christmas market
Forensic police inspect the car that rammed into a crowd at a Christmas market in Magdeburg, East Germany, on December 21, 2024
German police officers stand guard next to their vehicle at the scene of a car ram attack at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, December 21, 2024. According to Magdeburg police, at least two people were confirmed dead, dozens were injured and the suspect, a Saudi national, was taken into custody
Police vans and ambulances stand next to the annual Christmas market in the city center after a possible terror incident on December 20
Firefighters work at a cordoned-off Christmas market, where a car plowed into a crowd in Magdeburg on Friday evening
Overturned garbage bins and debris are seen as police officers walk through a closed Christmas market where a car crashed into a crowd the night before, injuring more than 60 people
A mourner lights a candle today at the Christmas market, where the night before a car crashed into a crowd, killing at least two people and injuring more than 60 people. At least two people were killed and more than sixty were injured
He also retweeted right-wing extremist AfD activist Naomi Seibt with the following quote: ‘Tyranny is based on the docility of cowards. I choose to be brave.”
Police have not identified an official motive for the attack.
Authorities in Magdeburg say two people were killed, including a toddler, while 68 people were injured in the disaster, 15 of them seriously.
The suspect was arrested after the crash that occurred at 7:04 p.m. in the city of Magdeburg, according to unidentified government officials in the state of Saxony-Anhalt who spoke to news agency dpa.
A search for his name and details of his work revealed that he was interviewed in 2019 by the Frankfurter Rundschau, a regional newspaper.
‘He came to Germany as a visiting doctor during his specialist training as a psychotherapist and later applied for asylum here because he had been threatened with death because he had turned away from Islam. The 44-year-old is recognized as a political refugee,” the newspaper wrote about him five years ago.
He said in an interview with the newspaper in 2019: ‘Nine out of ten people from Saudi Arabia who ask me about the asylum system are women.
Bild reported that the car had driven “at least 400 meters across the Christmas market”, according to a police spokesperson. It shows a car driving into a crowd of people
‘Other asylum activists report similar figures. This may be because for Saudi Arabian women, asylum is the only path to justice. Even if a woman is not oppressed, her fate depends on her male guardian.
‘There are women who say they have a good husband who does not oppress them, but wonder what will happen if the husband dies.
‘If the new man hits her, she won’t get any help. A woman is only protected if she has powerful men in her family.’
Just five days before carrying out the attack, Al-Abdulmohsen gave an interview with the right-wing RAIR Foundation in which he said: ‘If a Syrian citizen applies for asylum in Germany, the chance of getting asylum is 99.8%… While if If a Saudi citizen applies for asylum in Germany, that chance is only 70%, and I personally know that many of those rejected are ex-Muslims.
“Germany welcomes Syrians – including many Islamists – and at the same time rejects Saudi apostates, people who are truly fleeing sharia-based death sentences.”
Last night several officers were seen crowding around the man with guns drawn as they shouted at him. Officers were also seen chasing the growing crowd around the arrest incident, while a police officer crouched over him with a torch.
“As far as we know now, he was a lone attacker, so we don’t think there is any further danger to the city,” he added.